As Pokémon GO! conquers the world, not just as a game but as a social media, my internet bubble surrounding gaming and women is filling up with stories of women being sexually harassed by men while playing.

Dudes are using the hunt for Pokémon as another excuse to be, well, gaming dudes with the same incomprehension in real life as on the web that unsolicited sexual advances might not be the prime motivation for women out trying to catch Pokémon.

Is it really going to repeat itself IRL as well? The equivalent of dick pics and “show me your boobs”, but in this instance “let’s f**k” or “are you looking for a f**kbuddy?” (which are two actual stories from actual players that I’ve read recently, one of them 16 years old).

If women playing Pokémon GO! were really looking for men to have sex with, don’t you think that they would have chosen a different app for that? An app adapted to finding dates like, say, tinder? (And not even then are some of the approaches I’ve read about really appealing. Seriously, dudes…) The thing that bothers me the most with this apparent rash of women being accosted by men while playing is not that men are “flirting” with women, but that they apparently use any pretext to do so, and it’s not just Pokémon GO! being used, but it has the added discomfort of having dudes come at you in real life, especially men you don’t know, in a context that should be safe.

Anywhere women go there will be men there with the sexual harassment at the ready. Why do you do that? Why do you behave like utter creeps towards women who are only trying to play games?